Season's Greetings
by quotelation
Summary: Abby needed help with a church Christmas pageant. Ziva got roped into it. T/Z established relationship holiday fluff, with an emphasis on Ziva.


_These characters are not mine, but sometimes I think they have a better time with me than they do with their actual writers. Anyway, this is strongly holiday-flavored. Turn away now if that's not your thing. But if you like T/Z established relationship holiday fluff with an emphasis on Ziva, maybe you'll enjoy it._

* * *

><p>She did it for Abby.<p>

"It's a quintessentially American experience, really, Ziva; you shouldn't miss it."

A sampling of other lines Abby had tried:

The complimentary line: "The costume will look so great on you!"

The reasonable line: "It's not really a religious experience unless you want it to be."

The excited line: "It's such a lovely production; you're going to love it."

The wheedling line: "We'll go out afterwards and I'm buying."

The grasping for straws line: "I mean, you're both Jewish."

And the nonsensical line: "Basically, this will make the whole thing much more realistic."

Ziva, sitting on one of the counters in the lab, had made up her mind to do it somewhere around Abby's second point, which was when she checked the calendar on her phone and saw that the twenty-third was not the night Tony had said they'd go ice skating, after all. However, Abby's last point did make her raise her eyebrows. She gestured to her flat midsection. "Because clearly I am nine months pregnant?"

Abby flapped a clipboard at her and turned back to the big screen with a smile and a roll of the eyes. Ziva realized—with a smidge of irritation—that Abby had just realized that she had won. "No, no, no," Abby said. "You will just have _had _the baby."

"Ah."

"It's more realistic because, you know, you're from the Middle East, you're Jewish, you could totally pull off the virtuous thing..."

Ziva pursed her lips, but chose to ignore most of what Abby had just said. She had the sense that she would grow more uncomfortable if she continued thinking about it.

"I have read that Jesus was actually born in the spring in Nazareth," she said instead. "Although I believe Bethlehem benefits from the tourism."

Abby flapped the clipboard again. "Yes, okay. Moving on from the 'realistic' thing," she announced, "practice starts on the first of December. Your part is super important but super easy—practicing is mostly for the singers and the kids." She looked over her shoulder at Ziva, obviously sizing up how much information she could dish out without backlash. "You can't sing in the pageant, but you can sing in practice, if you want."

"You're singing what?" McGee asked as he strode into the lab. He observed Ziva's folded arms with interest. "What's she trying to get you to go to this time? Do I have to go?"

"Yes," Abby said, without looking up from her screen. "You have to come, but you don't have to be involved. I only had to recruit for the one position."

Ziva noted with amusement that McGee almost looked disappointed.

"You are welcome to take my place," she told him. "I suspect you can pull off 'virtuous' better than I can. Although these days you couldn't pull off the pregnancy thing any better than I." She patted his belly, enjoying his look of mixed confusion and offense.

"_Nobody_ is pregnant!" Abby huffed.

"Agent Ling is pregnant," McGee said, oblivious. "Her maternity leave starts pretty soon."

Abby rested her head on her clipboard.

Ziva escaped upstairs.

* * *

><p>So that was how Ziva ended up being listed on the back of the pamphlets Abby's church printed as "Mary, Mother of God."<p>

* * *

><p>Two weeks after Abby recruited her, Ziva stepped into the church for the first practice and looked around for black pigtails.<p>

Instead she found an elderly woman with a kind face and a heavy accent. "Who are you?" the woman asked.

Ziva couldn't stop tracking the movement of the woman's eyes, watching them dart from her face to her necklace to her face again. "Ziva David," she said.

The woman's expression did not change one iota, and Ziva realized that maybe her _own _name wasn't the answer to the question. "...Mary?" Ziva tried. Then she slipped into Spanish to hurriedly explain that no, she was not a member of this church, but Abby had asked her to participate—was Abby here? The woman smiled, slipped an arm around Ziva's waist. and strolled her forward.

"Abigail was right," she said, ending Ziva's explanation. "You will make a lovely Mary."

Ziva looked over her shoulder at the huge double doors, catching a glimpse of her husband's wide grin. He had insisted on driving her here, and now he took a seat in one of the back pews.

* * *

><p>"Joseph" was an atheist named Quentin. He also happened to be an outrageously attractive man around her own age, and Ziva enjoyed both talking to him and observing the way Tony's face went grumpy when she did. She had a lot of time to enjoy it, too, because Abby had been right—at least at this first practice, her role mainly involved standing in front of three women and getting measured for robes.<p>

Eventually she excused herself from Atheist Joseph and made herself busy with the long row of pint-size angels and shepherds. She knew the words to "Oh Holy Night" better than these little ones did, and the woman who was coaching them gladly welcomed the addition of another adult voice.

"It always turns _out_ well," she told Ziva during a juice box break, both of them busy punching straws through the tiny circles of silver foil and distributing the boxes downwards with instructions not to spill. "But the practices are a nightmare. Parents have the option to stay, but most of them scoot so they can run errands...busy time of year and all." Ziva nodded sympathetically and told a little boy wearing a superhero pajama shirt not to squeeze the box from the middle.

When she next looked up to find Tony or Abby—where _was _Abby?—she saw that Tony had moved to one of the front pews. Hollowed cheeks, sucking on a tiny white straw with a noisy gurgle. She called his name, tossed him an unopened juice box when he looked up.

"Hold it from the top," she called, and winked.

* * *

><p>Abby showed up at the two and a half hour mark. "Sorry," she panted. "Work."<p>

It was a pattern that continued. Tony took Ziva to the Monday and Thursday practices ("you're a menace driving downtown," he said, although she suspected he just liked experiencing this weird, festive novelty into which she'd been trapped), then Ziva spent five minutes on her own part and nearly three hours corralling the children. Abby would show up late, still in her lab coat.

"That new team is _killing_ me," she groused. "Analyze this, analyze that, stay late and analyze this other thing. I'm sorry. It must be a little weird for you to come without me."

Ziva shrugged. "It's really fine."

And it was. She was a little tired of Athiest Quentin and his Joseph, each of whom somehow conveyed an overly high opinion of himself, but she liked the singing. She liked hearing all those little voices, and all the adult voices, too, practicing down the hall. "The Little Drummer Boy" was a throaty sort of song that did her voice favors, and she was having a wonderful time helping the young shepherds with the tune. The church's women—it was mostly women—were warm and kind. And it gave her a glowy sort of feeling in her gut each time she caught Tony's face in the pews, or standing off to the side, and he was watching her. He was always watching her. Just her.

It would be late when they got home, and they would be very tired, and the apartment would be dark and cold, but his fingers would be warm on her jaw and neck, pulling her in, and his tongue would be hot.

"You're so," he muttered one mid-December night after pageant practice, her head still ringing with youthful choruses of "Angels We Have Heard on High" and her nose filled with the scent of their Christmas tree, next to which Tony had dropped their backpacks and coats. She waited for him to say "beautiful," or "good with those kids," or something else sweet and sensible, but he was distracted with the heated, silky skin of her back under her sweater and she was very busy kissing him.

Eventually she remembered. "I'm so what?" she murmured into the side of his neck.

He looked at her in the dim light cast by the strands wrapped around and around the tree, then scrunched her hair in his fist and kissed her again, open-mouthed and lingering, "So..._everything._"

* * *

><p>They got their costumes on the 18th of December, which was also the first day since Abby assigned her this role that Ziva felt out-of-sorts about being there.<p>

It was the third night of Hanukkah.

Technically, she was aware, this was not at all a big deal. They would just light the candles when they got home. It would be later than usual, but candles are candles. Hanukkah wasn't _like _Christmas, anyway. It was not, as Tony would say, The Big One.

Nevertheless, she still felt put out as one of the church ladies pulled her into the bathroom, asked her to strip down to her pants and camisole—the woman neatly folded Ziva's sweater for her and placed it on the edge of the sink—and then yanked a shift over her head, wrapped her in a robe, pinned here, pinned there, tied something, unraveled Ziva's braid and fluffed her hair, and finally settled a long piece of pale blue fabric over her head. Ziva watched in the mirror as she was transformed from 21st century American Special Agent to 1st century Israelite and new mother.

"There," the woman said after fifteen minutes. "Perfect. You'll need to leave all jewelry at home, though; your hands and neck will show."

Ziva smiled slightly and nodded. In the mirror she could tell that it didn't look appropriately jolly. Her jaw was too tense.

"You all right?" the woman asked, pausing.

"Just tired," Ziva said. "Tough case at work."

Ziva stood in front of the mirror looking at herself for several minutes after the placated woman left.

She bet Mary felt a little weird about the position she had found herself in, too.

* * *

><p>An hour later, one of the little angels tugged on her sleeve. It was a curious, funny one, named Maria, who sung with great gusto, very off-key. "Miss Ziva? You're dressed up to be Mary, right?"<p>

"I am, yes."

"It's pretty."

"Thank you."

"Are you married to him?" she asked, pointing to Quentin.

Ziva laughed in spite of herself. "No. Mary is married to Joseph, but _I_ am not married to _him_."

"Do you _have_ a husband?"

"Yes," Ziva answered, amused. She pointed at Tony. "That one over there."

Maria scrunched her nose and stood on tiptoe as she looked through the yawning mothers and grandmothers in the first two pews to spot Tony. "I think he's asleep," she said.

He in fact appeared to be snoring; his mouth was open and his head lolled against the back of the pew. His neck would hurt the next day if he stayed like that. She was about to deputize Maria to go wake him, when the child glanced up at her again. "Do you and him have a baby?"

"No."

"Why?"

Ziva opened her mouth to respond a little too early and let it hang, unsure of whether to deflect that question with "someday," or answer it honestly with "he and I have led unusual lives and have just now reached the point of talking about that, and it's still a topic that needs more consideration," which would probably be a little opaque for a six-year-old.

"Did I hear somebody say baby?" Abby said behind them, with a laugh that struck Ziva as a little ominous.

Maria made a delighted noise, followed by cooing.

Ziva turned around.

Abby shifted a very young baby into Ziva's arms.

"Abby-"

"Meet Jesus!" she said. "One month old; real name is Finn. And such a cutie!" She chucked the infant very gently under the chin. "He's been too little to practice with, but basically he just lies there in the manger, anyway. You don't have to pick him up unless he's crying and you think it'll help. You look great in that costume, by the way. I knew you would."

"You did not tell me about this part," Ziva said, eyes sharp on her friend.

"I forgot," Abby offered weakly.

She noticed Finn's mother hovering anxiously over Abby's shoulder. Poor woman. She hoisted the babe into a more comfortable, secure position and tried to inject a good deal of reassurance and confidence into the smile she gave his mother.

"Oh, look," Maria said. "He woke up!" Ziva looked down at the baby—hadn't he already been awake?—before realizing that Maria's gaze was directed into the church audience.

Tony was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, chin on his clasped hands, looking at her. She instinctively swayed from foot to foot with the baby and fluttered the fingers of one hand at Tony without moving her wrist.

He didn't wave back. Just watched. His gaze was usually light at these things—she could almost describe the way his eyes sparkled at her in appropriately seasonal ways, as twinkly or Christmas light-like—but now that gaze was very heavy.

* * *

><p>She lit the candles in the Chanukiah quickly and quietly when they got home, and he leaned against the door jamb, watching. His eyes were still heavy on her back, on her hands. She almost wished that he'd just go get ready for bed and let her do this by herself—it felt very slightly embarrassing to have him back there watching, after all the carols and costumes and fruit punch at the church earlier. It felt small. And private.<p>

Ziva stood still for a moment after the candles were lit. She could see the reflection of the flames—and her own reflection, and Tony's face, dimly—in the dark window. Her necklace glimmered. She shut her eyes.

She'd been thinking for years, in a locked, private part of her thoughts, that she would like to light these candles with her own child. In her mind, she saw the baby in her arms...saw a preschooler standing on one of the kitchen chairs, leaning forward, eyes wide...saw her own hand covering her child's hand, helping them light a candle. And in each of these, Tony stood at her back, a hand warm and secure on her hip, the other hand ready to steady the child, ready to catch a dropped candle, ready to avert any trouble.

She loved Christmas trees, Christmas cookies, Christmas music, the ubiquitous decorations. From the start, she had been willing to share in the holidays she didn't celebrate. She had attended festivities for Eid, for Diwali, for Easter, for the 4th of July, and had found them enjoyable, beautiful, meaningful. (Halloween would always annoy her, she thought.) But she had not anticipated Christmas's unique ability to subsume everything near it. She felt like it had subsumed her, a little, too, and she knew it would utterly consume her children. Her potential children. Her Jewish-Catholic children.

It was just that she was not sure how to feel about that.

"Ziva?"

"Just tired," she said, and then cringed a little internally. "Just tired" was for sweet ladies at the St. Augustine Catholic Church. "Just tired" didn't work on Tony.

Instead of walking away, cold-shouldered, though—he did that sometimes when she was cool or dismissive, and she hated it—he stepped up behind her. Lined his front against her back. Spread his right fingers on her hip and reached his other forearm across her collarbone, gripping her right shoulder. She leaned back into him, and brought her hands up to grip his arm, warm in its striped shirtsleeve.

He rested his head on hers, and she watched the candlelight play off her wedding ring.

* * *

><p>They had practice again on the seventh night of Hanukkah, but it was the night before the pageant. Dress rehearsal. And everything was a million times too hectic for her to even spend time pondering how she felt. They were on location for the first time tonight, outdoors, under an approximation of a wooden stable, and it was quite cold. She was busy rocking little Finn, who was not happy; snapping her fingers at various children and pointing them into their places; keeping the veil straight; and ignoring Quentin, who looked wonderful in his robes and was being completely insufferable. If it were a few years ago—and if she weren't in such close proximity to an infant and many children, and if she weren't essentially in a house of worship—she'd probably have boxed his ears by now.<p>

"From the top!" called a harried-looking woman, and Ziva sighed, then, a moment later, tried to suppress fond laughter at the youngest angels' halting rendition of "Silent Night." Tony looked dashing in his overcoat tonight, and he stood on the sidewalk nearby, grinning at the baby angels and glancing over at her frequently to see if she had noticed their antics. Abby stood next to him (on time for once, Ziva thought wryly), and appeared to be in something of a rapture over the whole thing.

Around the fourth song, Maria caught Ziva's eye and made a silly face. Ziva waved, and was promptly chastised by the frazzled lady for breaking character. Quentin complained some more. Ziva got to kneel next to the manger, but he had to stand, and apparently his legs were tired. Ziva scrabbled around on the ground for a piece of straw and discreetly reached around the manger and under his long robes to tickle his bare leg. He swore. "Great! Just great! There are bugs out here! In December!"

"Don't swear in front of the children," she said sternly. Then she tickled his leg again, and he yelped.

Abby and Tony were looking at her with matching suspicious looks on their faces. She smiled demurely at them. Adjusted her veil.

Hey, who was to say that Mary hadn't had a sense of humor?

* * *

><p>On the final night of Hanukkah, they left work early. Ziva dressed calmly, helped wrangle some children, and fed Finn after both baby and bottle were unexpectedly pressed into her hands. Before they left to trek outside, Ziva caught Tony and pulled him into a corner. She worked off her wedding ring, then unhooked her necklace and strung the ring on the necklace. She fastened it around Tony's neck, and tipped her face up to give him a soft kiss.<p>

"I feel really weird kissing the Virgin Mary," he commented.

"You should try _being_ the Virgin Mary."

"Sweetheart, that ship sailed a long time ago."

She gave him a look.

"What? We are _married_!"

She shook her head and patted his cheek. "Yes. So keep my ring safe."

* * *

><p>For the most part, the pageant went smoothly. People came and watched, sung along, and took the pamphlets, reading with interest the bit inside about how some of the pageant members were atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Hindu, and Protestant, and how gathering to put on something that would bring people joy perfectly embodied the spirit of the holiday season.<p>

Ziva wasn't one hundred percent sold on the pamphlet's reasoning, but it was a nice message, anyway.

The little children left first. Their parents bundled them into bathrobes and coats and brought out thermoses of hot chocolate and took pictures—Maria's mother managed to wrap her daughter in a duck-printed bathrobe before Maria bolted to the stable, where she inserted herself between Ziva and the manger and cuddled in close. Her mother took several pictures. She even promised to text Ziva one.

The adults and little Finn stayed in their tableau a bit longer, mostly for photography purposes. The baby was asleep, but Ziva worried about his bare head—even with the outdoor heaters thrumming around the stable, it was cold, and eventually she went ahead and picked him up out of the cradle. Pins and needles were creeping up her calves and thighs, and her fingers were freezing, but it wasn't so bad, she thought. She and Tony had the next two days off. She was looking forward to cuddling on the couch, browsing through the million catalogs they'd been too busy to look through. Tony loved catalogs. She loved how excited he got when they flipped the pages. And she also loved his ridiculous explanations for why they needed everything on every page. She liked teasing him about that.

"Hey," said the man she was thinking about, his shiny shoes shuffling through the straw in the stable.

"Oh, thank god," said Quentin. "Is it time to go home?"

"_Yes_," Ziva said.

"The real holiday gift," she said to Tony as they watched Quentin fly back towards the church, holding his robes up so they could see his bare legs, "is the sight of him running the opposite direction from me."

He chuckled, and squatted in Quentin's vacated spot. "The whole thing looked great."

"Good."

"Gibbs, McGee, and Ducky are around here somewhere."

"And Abby?"

"Of course. You ready to head out of here?"

She tried to get to her feet without hands, but that proved impossible with two numb legs. "Ugh," she groaned, and teetered.

Tony held out his arms for the baby. It wasn't until she had handed him over and was in the process of pushing herself up on her dead legs with the help of the manger that she realized that holding a baby was not at all something Tony usually offered to do. Not comfortably, or willingly. She paused in shaking her legs out and surveyed him. He certainly looked comfortable, holding Finn. The corners of his mouth were turned up a little. The corners of his eyes betrayed a little nervousness, but even so, there was an unexpected level of contentment there.

"It looks good on you," she said quietly. Lightly.

"What does? My overcoat? I know; you always say it's dashing."

"The baby."

"Oh." Tony looked down at the baby again, then back to her. "You know, I was going to say the same thing about you, but then I thought maybe it wasn't the right time."

She swallowed. "I think it's the right time."

"Yeah?"

"I do."

Tony looked skyward for a long moment. "I really want to hug you right now," he said eventually, "but I don't know how to do that with _this_..." he raised Finn in his arms.

Ziva chuckled. "You can make up for that later," she suggested.

"Oh, I intend to, Ms. David," he said, in a low voice that sent shivers prickling down her sides. Then, in a lighter tone: "There will be definite male input in all of your future pregnancies. No more of this virgin birth stuff."

She squinted at the sidewalk, where she could see Finn's mother hurrying towards them, and she smiled. "Promise?"

* * *

><p>Abby nearly knocked her over with a hug. "You were beautiful and wonderful and perfect," she gushed, "and we're going to go do something fun now, so you go get dressed."<p>

In the church bathroom, between pulling on her pants and sweater, Ziva checked her phone. Maria's mother had texted her the photo. She also had a series of texts from McGee: Ziva cooing at baby Finn. Tony and Ziva both in the stable, laughing at something off-camera—Quentin, she realized. Ziva in an awkward pose, getting up, while Tony smiled at the baby in his arms. Ziva smiling at Tony.

She kissed McGee's cheek and gave his forearm a brief squeeze on the way to the cars.

"Where to?" There were a number of bars they all liked not too far from here. She hoped they went to the one that served the excellent hamburgers. Juice boxes and cookies didn't take much of the edge off.

Gibbs climbed into Tony's car with them. "You'll see."

* * *

><p>"You'll see" turned out to mean "home." Ziva craned around in her seat and furrowed her brow at Gibbs. "Are we picking something up?"<p>

He gave her a funny little grin. "Are we?"

McGee pulled up in the space next to them, and Abby and Ducky climbed out and headed for the entrance, tucking their hands in their pockets against the cold, Ducky singing a rousing chorus of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."

"Are we going to—" she gestured at their friends.

"Yeah! Yeah," Tony said, "But hang on a sec." Gibbs went ahead and got out, following their friends, but Tony grabbed her hand before she could open the passenger side door. "You forgot something," he said, fumbling with the clasp at the back of his neck. "Damn. This is a lot harder when you can't see it."

The tiny clasp was warm from his skin when she reached up to unhook it. "And I didn't even have to look," she teased. Her wedding ring slipped back onto her finger, and she reclasped the necklace around her own neck. "Can we go now?"

Tony glanced at the car's clock and killed the engine. "Yeah, okay."

She was too tired to be very curious. "They had better not be making an enormous mess, Tony."

"They won't make an enormous mess."

"If they do, it is automatically your turn to do the dishes. I had planned on going _out _tonight."

"I think," he said, pausing in front of their door at last. "I think you're gonna be glad we didn't, actually."

He opened the door for her, and the smell of a home-cooked meal wafted into the hallway. The Christmas tree was lit up and sparkling, but the music was one of her favorite instrumental albums, rather than a Christmas one. The Chanukiah had been pulled forward a bit. And Abby nestled a plate of latkes onto the table just as Ziva stepped through the door.

"I hope it's right," she said. "I just googled a recipe."

"It smells delicious," Ziva said, turning a questioning eye on her husband. Who shrugged.

"You're always amazing about doing our stuff, and we thought...we could do a lot better about yours. It's the last night of Hanukkah. I wanted us to celebrate it. As a family."

The Christmas lights and the candles McGee has finished lighting on the sideboard abruptly gained halos, and Ziva had to blink several times to bring them back into clear focus. "Well," she started. "I—well."

She got stuck there, looking around at the bright faces of her friends. After a moment of wordlessness, Tony stage-whispered to their team, "I think it's a success. We made her speechless!" and the moment broke. Ziva released a watery laugh and smacked him in the stomach with the back of her hand.

"Happy Hanukkah," she said. "Happy holidays! Thank you."

There was mistletoe hanging in the hallway—Hanukkah, Christmas, Yuletide, she didn't care if it matched holidays or not—and she made sure to grab Tony's tie and drag him under it just a few minutes later, friends' surprised and amused eyes be damned.

"I love you," she told him, drawing back for breath.

"Yeah," he said, chasing her lips. "Right back at you."

She rolled her eyes and kissed him anyway.

* * *

><p>The next year, Tony and Ziva's preparations for both Christmas and Hanukkah—which came safely before Christmas—were somewhat haphazard, due to the one-month-old who had taken over their lives. The team came on the first night of Hanukkah, this time, and the latkes were better. And on the twenty-third of December, Ziva stood on the sidewalk in front of a spectacular outdoor nativity scene, cradling her own child.<p>

"I didn't used to be crazy about the holidays," Tony remarked. His arm across her shoulders was keeping her warm, and she snuggled still nearer. "But you know, I'm beginning to be a real fan."

"Yes," said Ziva, looking from the lights on the pageant actors to the soft light of her sleeping daughter's face. "I know exactly what you mean."

* * *

><p><em>So…Happy Thanksgiving?<em>


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